Chaos Online is a browser-based game that has the look and feel of dozens, if not hundreds of other free-to-play games – it’s presented in isometric view, has plenty of icons popping all over the screen and it has an habit of playing itself, at least during the first hours. It also has a shameless tendency to include sexually suggestive loading screens and revealing female avatars, something that is no doubt intended to capture the attention of the younger players.

But in all honesty, it’s not the worst offender of this kind of games. For starters, characters are in full 3D, which makes a nice change from the usual badly animated sprites that abound in many other games, and you can zoom in for a bit of detail. And there’s also some depth to it – that is, after you pass the first 20 or 30 levels, something that won’t take you more than an hour. After that the game becomes less of an elongated tutorial and you actually have a few options besides questing, such as the arena, which opens at level 14, where you can show your skills against other players. All very fast, very automated, but it still gives you a competitive feel if you like that sort of thing.

You can go to the tavern and recruit allies to help in combat, but you have to dig crystals to be able to hire them. You can then place the hero in your team, create combos and attribute a role to him or her, such as fast healer or attack melee target. Then there’s this vast choice of small things, including forging weapons, upgrading your mount and plenty more. There’s definitely plenty to do, we can’t deny that.

However, by now you probably know already what you’re getting yourself into. Chaos is a game where you’ll eventually reach a place where you’ll have either to grind quite a bit, wait for cooldowns to end or pay up to speed up the process, just as it happens with the arena. Digging crystals to recruit heroes also depends on your chisels, which tend to be used at an alarming rate. Becoming a VIP gives you extra exchange rates and certainly more stuff that speeds up your progress. When you reach level 20 you’ll have plenty of flashing icons in the top right corner of your screen, inviting you to get this and get that… for a price, of course.

In the end, Chaos is what it is: another browser-based game where you level up faster during the first hour than you can blink, has currencies that go in the gazillions, and when you’re feeling all comfy and happy with your progress, you’ll realize that unless you spend the real bucks, you won’t pose any challenge to those players that actually paid to increase their battle power. The best that we can say about Chaos Online is that we’ve seen a lot worse than this, but as far as compliments go, here’s a small test for you: try saying something like this to your current girlfriend or boyfriend and let’s see what kind of reaction you’re going to get.